Will ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, be as important to customers as it is to retailers? In terms of tailoring customer recommendations, the technology’s capacity to respond to inquiries and then recall the dialogues and context is encouraging. But is it ready to enhance consumer satisfaction?
Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT is an artificial chatbot that has gained notice in the retail world for its capacity to articulately and thoroughly respond to customer inquiries across a wide range of subject matters. ChatGPT will generate various AI-generated graphics if you ask it for suggestions on how to decorate a living room in a fantastical fashion, for example.
Nevertheless, a number of retailers have jumped on the ChatGPT bandwagon, including Shopify, Instacart, and Carrefour. They are evaluating films and other elements that offer advice, information about products, and answers to queries.
However, customers already anticipate these services from shops. The question that merchants using ChatGPT must consider is: How does it result in a better customer experience?
1. As a personal shopper who is constantly thinking. Marketing experts think ChatGPT has the potential to develop into a more powerful version of a personal shopper because it learns about people’s preferences through inquiries and chats. According to early reports, it may be able to, for instance, remember how a client responded to a previous product recommendation and draw on that response to improve subsequent recommendations. For instance, the supermarket delivery service Instacart is launching a tool called Ask Instacart that, in theory, will respond to queries from customers about product pricing, nutrition, and even the amount of time required to prepare recipes.
2. Through easing developing pains. ChatGPT’s AI should be able to foresee when a customer will start shopping for size 3T apparel if they enquire about size 2T clothing now. However, trends might suggest that developing children have increasingly complicated requirements. In the same way that a 7-year-old going through early-onset puberty may outgrow her little-girl clothes too rapidly, a young boy who stays in one size for a long period may be a late bloomer and demand more “grown-up” clothing. ChatGPT may target preferences with style recommendations and utilise the data to identify the newest trends in smaller and larger sizes (Gaps Kids is one of its concepts).
3. Through assisting those who have disabilities. For physical as well as sensory reasons (a possible intolerance to tags and seams, for example), people who use wheelchairs, have autism, or were born with Down syndrome have specialised clothing demands. Through past queries or a retailer’s “tell us about you/your family” survey, ChatGPT can recognise these customers and retrieve from its memory the brands and merchants that provide products to meet their demands. For instance, ChatGPT gave numerous recommendations in response to the question “Where can I find clothing for a child in a wheelchair?” including the Tommy Hilfiger adaptable line and Target’s Cat & Jack adaptive clothing for children.
Retailers and brands may overcome many consumer comprehension difficulties with the help of innovations like ChatGPT, but they shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that an algorithm will never truly comprehend a customer. Every individual it encounters is a composite of various categories, including married, employed, a homeowner, a TikTok user, a father, and a diabetic.
Retailers and brands are still responsible for making sure the algorithm is set up to first determine a person’s needs rather than to promote their own products. Understanding the “why” behind the numerous queries, inquiries, and dialogues that users feed the bot should be the aim.